‘Every dive in the Maldives is a drift dive’ the guide said and with the chance of Manta Ray’s, Sharks and a buddy who drives a BBC camera for a living, this had the makings of a good trip!  We would be staying aboard the MV Sea Queen and diving from her support vessel the Luna which was a also called a ‘Dhoni’  Maldivian live aboards differ from the Red Sea variety, in that you live-on the main boat & dive from a smaller support boat called a Dhoni. This means lot’s more space on the big boat and all the wet gear, compressors and noise stay on the Dhoni.

The check out dive didn’t disappoint, other than being at a site with far too many of the wrong letters in its name to be remotely pronounceable.  We drifted along in a gentle current, fish spotting – Grey Reef shark, a White Tip, Turtles (3 off), Fusiliers, Trevally & a couple of Moray’s.  Then as we climbed back aboard the Dhoni we where treated to a pod of dolphins leaping, tumbling and having a wale of a time on our bow wake and this was just the first day!  Day 2 and the first real day of diving saw us on the first wreck of the trip, an old trawler doing a ‘Rhondo’ on the local reef, all very photogenic and covered in fish life both big and small.  After lunch it was drift time again, and we began to notice a strange pre-dive routine.  Once at the dive site the local guide would jump in to see which way the current was running, mustn’t have a set of tide-tables or so I thought.  Later on I found out that that’s the way they do it over here – the guides never know which way the current will run or how fast, so they just leap in and look, it could never work in the North Sea!

It was on day 3 it all started go a bit pear shaped.  The first dive was a fast 30m drift down a channel from a lagoon towards the Ocean – it was supposed to be the other way round but the tides changed (don’t they always?). We drifted along taking lots of pictures, admiring the wildlife ending up in the blue.  The second dive was much the same, a fast 32m drift along a channel with plenty on show as well as the first signs of El Nino large area’s of dead coral.  Dive 3 (our third 30m+ dive of the day) was an easy drift from the edge of a drop off with some quality shark watching, which my camera-toting buddy took to with relish.  Speeding this way and that, chasing everything and anything that moved, to get ‘the shot’.  From there it was along a sandy channel similar to our previous dives allowing for a long easy deco, which not everyone took full advantage of, bearing in mind the dives we’d done that day.  Later that night a fast boat was sent from Male to ferry the casualty to the chamber.

From then on the diving got a bit more conservative with deco time used to the full by everyone.  By now we were all well into the routine, we’d guess which way the current would be today, the local guide would leap in to confirm - we’d then either jump in or move to the other end of the channel and then jump in.  Some of the drifts where fast (huge cheesy grin fast) some where more mundane, but on each the life was different and varied from rich to bleached dead, although some where beginning to show signs of life again.  Sharks, Rays and Trevally where seen on every dive but I never got to dive with the Manta’s, only snorkel.  Pretty incredible although I’m no fan of snorkelling (as you may well know!), but just being in the water with a dozen or so of these massive fish twisting and rolling all around was worth the trip.

Highlight of the trip was surprisingly not the Manta’s although they where well up there but ‘Broken Rock Thila’ where we were virtually crawling over the reef into a huge howling current to hook into the rock and hang in the current. There we were tied to the reef by a mere thread and literally surrounded by fish, all around in their hundreds – Fusiliers, Red Tooth’s, Wrasse Surgeonfish, Jacks, Snappers, everything in the fish watchers guide was there, everywhere. White tips and Trevally where coursing through the pack picking off the unwary or the weak, with the pack spiralling and flashing to and fro to try to confuse the predators.  All too soon with air getting down we had to unhook (not easy) and in an instant flashed over the reef, off into the blue and straight into the heart of a huge shoal of snappers – it just doesn’t get any better than this !!